In Ivory Coast, CIDR Pamiga helped set up a health microinsurance scheme for growers and their families, working with major cocoa companies. 

CIDR Pamiga’s goal, working in a public-private partnership, was to offer protection to people excluded from conventional social welfare systems in a particularly impoverished rural part of Ivory Coast. 

A budget of over one million euros

The programme ran between 2013 and 2017 in the Lacs District, targeting rural communities with very little previous access to healthcare. Partnering with the health and employment ministries and Biopartenaire, a specialist local trading company that sources cocoa beans from growers, CIDR Pamiga developed a health mutual benefit scheme for small-scale growers in the Ivory Coast network. The goal was to help improve the health of producers and their families and forge lasting ties between Biopartenaire and its grower partners.  

The initiative is also a virtuous tool for ensuring grower loyalty in a fiercely competitive sector and reliable, good quality supplies. It means the company can meet the very strong and growing demand from Europe for chocolate. This makes this method for funding healthcare access a win-win solution, with benefits to growers and their families as well as to major cocoa companies.  

The state also benefits from this pilot initiative since it improves healthcare provision which is based  on needs on the ground. While the operation ran, the state was researching solutions for providing a system of universal health cover. 

Implementation was funded by Agence Française de Développement (AFD), the German ministry of cooperation (BMZ) and two private companies, Biopartenaire and Barry Callebaut, for a total budget of over one million euros for the entire project. 

A solution adapted to the sector’s needs 

The decision to focus on a specific sector made it possible to devise a programme that reflected the needs of growers and their families. An awareness-raising campaign was then run in villages to explain the benefits of signing up for the service. 

Another positive effect of the programme saw people becoming better informed about healthcare and the follow-ups needed to stay healthy. 

The programme in figures

>7,388 people provided with health cover

> 167 villages educated about health insurance

> 70 healthcare providers involved 

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